First-responders are those rescuers that are first to arrive at any catastrophic event – whether “natural” (such as a flood or earthquake) or man-made (such as mass school-shootings or terrorist attacks). The knowledge obtained by studying enduring psychological reactions among rescuers has far-reaching public health implications. Following the spate of deadly mass-shootings over the past Read more…
Archive for the ‘ Fear and Arousal ’ Category
New-York-Firefighters:-A-Sample-of-First-Responders-10-Years-Following-the-Collapse-of-the-World-Trade-Center
Friday, December 7th, 2018The Confirmation Hearings of Judge Brett Kavanaugh: An example of Political Terrorism
Thursday, September 27th, 2018The stage appeared set for the “Perfect Storm”: Urgently in need of optics that portrayed the Republicans as a club of White-Men bullying a traumatized assault- victim, they limited their role to a single interview by a Trauma-Prosecutor. What “real-life”, spontaneous, interaction occurred, was limited to the Democratic Members of the Judicial Committee. And Christine Read more…
Letting your Child “Cry it out”: A big No-No according to Scientific Studies
Tuesday, March 27th, 2018Darcia Narvaez, an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Notre Dame, recently wrote in Psychology Today how excessive crying out could be dangerous for children, leading to a lifetime of harm. In trauma research, foraging patterns are used to study stress responses by replicating different attachment models. A research team led by Read more…
The Yom-Kippur debacle: How Israel`s underlying “Good Mother Complex” toward the U.S. almost proved fatal
Friday, January 30th, 2015In my book titled Psychological Trauma, I attempt to explain the interpersonal dynamics of three functional entities involved in abuse, whether domestic or political (published by Authorhouse, 2015). A model posing a triad of predator, victim, and caretaker, applies both at the individual or community level. Since its establishment as a sovereign Jewish State in 1948, Read more…
What Happens to the Brain in PTSD?
Monday, July 8th, 2013In 1937, James Papez proposed in his now-classic article, based on his anatomical research, “emotions have an anatomical mechanism and location in the brain” (“A Proposed Mechanism of Emotion.” Arch. Neurol. Psychiatry (1937): 38). Dr. MacLean, the leading authority in limbic neurology, in general championed Papez`s findings. He insisted that in the process of evolution Read more…
Fear and Arousal following Trauma
Friday, May 17th, 2013Fear and Arousal following Trauma Fear is one of the most powerful primary negative emotions resulting from psychological trauma. I will discuss some of the neurobiology of the “fear cascade” in a separate article. Fear is a survival serving emotion, triggered by threat that activates a complex set of changes throughout the body via a Read more…